Word: bushed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...When it comes to the role of Homeland Security Secretary, there are also second looks aplenty. Even though Bush never invited him to a National Security Council meeting, Ridge thinks future Homeland Security chiefs should be asked occasionally to attend. He also says Homeland Security leaders need to be more careful than he was about allowing political language into their public statements. (Watch TIME's video "Homeland Security Trade Show...
...particular, he regrets his Aug. 1, 2004, decision to include political language praising Bush in a statement about raising the terrorism threat level. The statement was issued just as Democratic nominee John Kerry was enjoying a post-convention bump in the polls. But he stops short of questioning the intentions of the Bush aides who asked him to include the language in the first place; and contrary to pre-publication media reports that got many former Bush Administration officials up in arms, he claims that the decision to raise the alert was made without regard to political pressure...
...There was a heated discussion on the weekend before the 2004 election, in which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft made their case in vain to raise the terrorism threat level. Ridge now admits that he thought political calculation might have been at play. (Polls supporting Bush tended to spike when the terrorism threat level went up.) But he is not about to accuse either Rumsfeld or Ashcroft of letting politics cloud their judgment. "I'm not trying to second-guess two colleagues whose service I respect," he says...
...political memoir is always a delicate dance, and Ridge has handled it carefully. He still considers Bush a friend, and he has considerable praise for the public servants he worked with at the White House...
...Read "Inside Bush and Cheney's Final Days...